On Saturday I had a major incident. She's completely obliterated. Ripped out the servo wires down to the base. Even broke the metal fan housing and that's hard to do.

Beautiful scale-like take off. Gear up, take off flaps up bring her around for the downwind. All good so far. Back on the upwind leg, full throttle high speed pass then vertical.

On the vertical, did a 180 reversing half Cuban maneuver and started the dive. Here's where I ran into trouble. I ran out of altitude. Performed this same reversing maneuver hundreds of times and with the Mig, maybe a dozen or so times. So it really surprised me.

Wham ! Into the trees on the far end of our field. These are mainly thorny scrub trees the will rip anything apart. Arrived at the crash scene and found a mess. Parts were dangling from tree limbs and pieces of foam were spread out in a 20 yard radius. Hardly anything salvagable except for the lipo, esc, rx and stabilizer. Maybe a few servos.

Was really liking this plane but now the conundrum. Do I get a replacement? Arf+? Look for a used one? I could get a new fan and housing. Or do I go for the A-10? or do I hope and wait for FW to bring out a F4 Phantom? or the next new thing? I really like the 80mm series.

I did!! I put down a factor 3d. Lost every thing in a 40 foot hover went straight in nothing I can do. Still my fault I once thought it had a bad deans plug but worked for a long time after. I should have replaced it at that point. Oh well

Alas, It's the time we get to spend with each bird that our memories hold onto. For some the time is short but sweet. "Been there done that." we have all repeated to many times. So now there an empty spot in the hanger, soon to be fill with another favorite bird, but those bird of the past can never really be replaced. each one was a pleasure to have experienced.

in memory of

Towerhobby Uproars {4 of them} and one kit still to be built again on the shelf'

narrow is the place to land...wide is the space to crash....choose the narrow way!

Definitely. If they fly they will crash at one point. I once had a Seamaster flew it for like 10years just loved the plane but sold it because we had such a good run that I did not want to ruin it. I opted to keep only the good memories.

ExtremeFlight 48" Edge 540 EXP is no more. Augered in from about 150'. 90% sure by battery came unplugged. Battery leads had to make a pretty sharp bend to make it to the esc connection. Soldered a T connector on a new 4S this morning and noticed it seemed to slip pretty easily. With the sharp bend in the wire and vibration in flight, she just went dead. Motor stopped and all control inputs ceased at the same moment. Stand alone Castle BEC. My guess is that the bend became a spring and pulled the main connection apart. *sigh*
Most likely start zip tying the connections. $.03 a flight vs. potentially hundreds of dollars. Perhaps change out 50+ deans connectors to another platform over the winter.

Got the new 48" Yak maidened. Flies very well.

Though the Edge was an excellent plane, considering salvaging the electronics into a 48" Laser...

Looking back and watching the raw video ... I think it was ME ! I was playing with switches and making her aerobat .... I have a HE 6 axis in her .... I think I may have inadvertently hit a combo of switches / stab commands that she did not like.
Straight after takeoff I noted she was undulating on level flight - indicates too high stab setting. So I dialed her back but not to my usual point. I only usually have enough to counter gusty wind. Then I was clicking through the various modes it has while hovering etc. This I believe was the killer .... I usually like to tumble out of high hovers - and then pull out after a lazy curve back up into level flight ....

The video shows the tumble start but then she levels herself and into the ground ...

She hit the deck so hard ..... the spinner and front of cowl was buried into the ground with only tip of prop showing ... a 15x10 ! I had to dig it out with bare hands.

I can rebuild the frame ..... but problem is the cowl and canopy which are not available separately. Pal in the club reckons he can create a mould to remake the cowl and a form for passing to guys in Riga to vac-form new canopy.

But the saving grace that day was my Tiger Moth ....... what a beauty ! Not often you get to fly a natural. It just 'wanted' to be in the air .....

Depth perception failing. We have a tree line on the West end that you must clear then a drop down on final. Was showing a guy how easy the Yak-130 flew. Zooming around at over 100 mph and then slowing to a crawl. Brought her around on base leg to line up for final. Actually though I was inside the tree line. Not. Whack. She came through a cluster of trees and landing on her belly just inside of the tree line.

I had completely mis-judged the trees.

The good news is that at least I knew I would find her. The damage wasn't really too ba at all. Snapped one wing off and dented the LE slightly on the other but that was about it. I was actually happily surprised. Easy glue and go. Will replace spar with some carbon arrow stock I have.

Nigel saw your first video of the Ziln earlier and she flew great. Hope you get your remote camera soon. When she's far out it looks like a dot.

DUH is about all I can say. It was a old GWS Micro Stik with way too much motor and way too many G's on an unsupported wing. Looking back, I think it had way too much motor for it's weight, wing type etc also. It was running a HobbyMate 2806 which is a 1360kva motor I believe, a 30 amp ESC and a 3 cell battery. It probably should have been a 250 SloFly motor and 10 amp ESC and a 2 cell battery for just circle flying and some gentle maneuvers. Still not sure to repair it or just use it for some parts with low flight time on them.
Perky

bad day For FPV'ing... 1st I burned out the esc on the assassin EPP wing. Its fixed already. Last week the fan on my fatshark goggles broke,I took the faceplate apart and resoldered wires but to no avail. i think the motor burnt out since direct wiring would not get it to run.

Last and the worst. Today I crashed my 210 realacc quad in the swamp!!! I only found it because it was 2/3rds submerged in water and the Loc8tor finder device was still operational. I had to strip off sneakers and pants to wade in 2 ft water....it became 4ft when my foot sunk in 2ft of muck, My shirt and under pants got soaked.
. No Way other than to swim a few ft to retrieve the stupid quad.Went home ,showered and I dried the quad out with an air compressor and it had 3 motors working. a little more cleaning and...... I heard a sharp"pop" and dreaded smoke for the PDB which is built into the quad frame as a large base plate.

Oh well, all parts useable are striped off and the frame which is basically useless. No more quad frames where the PDB[power distribution board] is part of the mainframe.

All I need now is a new 210 quad frame and a separate PDB.....

narrow is the place to land...wide is the space to crash....choose the narrow way!

Encore performance of post 2139 above. Another Yak-130. Late in the day. Thought I had cleared our tree border. Not! Shredded her right through. Possibly repairable with a lot of tlc but the arf is so cheap, why bother ?

Many moons ago .... at a County Show ... our club was invited to fly with others ...

Show ground was a large Country Estate with a lovely lawn area for us. Of course the wind happened to be perfectly along the intended 'runway' parallel to the spectators ... BUT in exactly the opposite direction ... TOWARDS a line of mature very tall Poplar trees a way back ... No problem for the small and light parkfly stuff - but this was pre-electric days when we had heavier glow jobs as the norm.
I was wary of putting my 61 powered Mirage 2000 up ... take-off would be fine, but landing would prove interesting.

Anyway ... I was convinced by others that all would be good ... so fired her up and she took the skies ...
I did my usual jet style stuff and then it came to landing.

Can you guess how long it takes to rattle down through the branches of a very tall Poplar tree before depositing bits on the ground ? Its quite long .. and you stand there watching it do it ... thinking "Why did I do it !!"

It was also the same show that a pal of mine decided to fly his F3A aerobatics machine at same time I was demonstrating my Club 20 Racer ... bow as far as I was aware he was going to fly higher and wider than me .. my RM Racer is quick and I have to keep eyes fully on that ... so I scream past and flick her round for opposite run ... SMACK ! Carved straight through his wing ....
Now he tried blaming me - even though he'd been told by the Stewards to keep clear as I was the scheduled flyer doing a demo !!

Actually thinking about it - He's still got my Zlin Akrobat plans !! He 'borrowed' back in about 1985 !!

Its been a LOOOONG time since I've midair'd with someone.. but it happened yesterday. I got FLOWN THROUGH by a pattern ship. Completely totalled the pattern, and my Night Visionaire (4 years old) will get stripped, retired and replaced. Well, you know how they say that all airplanes have an expiration date? Mine said "Best if used before 2018"